Sillage
by kawree
Summary: Some sins of the past leave deeper scars than others, and what begins as just an unseasonably rainy evening leaves Ryoko fighting for her life. NO LONGER BEING UPDATED HERE, PLEASE GO TO AO3.
1. Parable

**sill · age**  
/sēˈäZH/

 _noun_  
The trace of someone's perfume in the air where they have been and gone; the impression that remains after someone's departure; ripples or shadows left behind.  
 _from the French word for 'wake', as in the trail behind a boat or aircraft._

* * *

 **Chapter One: Parable**

 _In which there is some antagonistic allegory._

ミ

She hadn't been expecting the wind to be so high today. After spending two years in Okayama, Aeka had grown fairly accustomed to the unpredictability of the weather on Earth, but there were still days when she wished that Washuu would be more aggressive with her weather-control systems. Of _course_ she understood that Washuu couldn't just implement her inventions across the whole planet, not when human civilization was still decades—if not centuries—from that kind of technology, but the Masaki home was so far removed from the rest of the town that surely keeping the _wind_ at bay in its immediate vicinity would go unnoticed.

Gathering up the handful of shirts that had blown free of the drying line as she'd tried to retrieve them, Aeka sighed heavily and draped them over her arm, shading her eyes from the afternoon sun. It was hard to believe that so much time had already passed, and yet, some days it felt as though no time had passed at all. After having spent so much of her life desperately looking for her lost brother, if someone had told Aeka two years ago that she would be happily settled on a primitive planet, living (mostly) peacefully on a farm alongside the very woman who had been the cause of Yosho's departure, she would have laughed at the absurdity of the idea. Yet here she was, chasing down laundry while Sasami hung the next load out to dry in the sun, two princesses of the great planet Jurai happy to do chores for the young man they had come to so adore.

"You missed one."

Aeka closed her eyes and furrowed her brow and took a deep breath in an effort not to look quite so annoyed when she turned to face Ryoko, who was floating casually in the air behind her, a pair of delicate pink underwear hooked on her little finger and a sly grin on her face.

"Wh—? I—!" The attempt at annoyance-evasion failed spectacularly as Aeka snatched the panties from Ryoko's hand and clutched them abashedly against her chest. "How _dare_ you?" she gasped, mortified. "I thought even _you_ were above this sort of thievery, Miss Ryoko."

Ryoko snorted a laugh and folded her hands together behind her head. "I didn't thieve _nuthin'_ ," she said, sticking her tongue out. "I was a career space pirate, remember? I only steal things that are _worth_ something. Nobody wants _your_ booty to be their booty." She waved a hand dismissively. "You're just lucky that's the only pair that escaped."

"'Escaped'?" Aeka narrowed her eyes suspiciously. How had Ryoko gotten a hold of her underwear in the first place? Of course she and the other girls in the house had to hang their unmentionables to dry, but she was quite sure she'd clipped them securely to the square plastic drying rack outside the bedroom she shared with Sasami. "Where did you _find_ these?" she asked carefully, and Ryoko cocked one pale eyebrow, then jerked a thumb over her shoulder.

"They blew off the rack, you nimrod," she said, and then grinned. "I thought maybe Washuu's weather machine made it rain panties, but no, it was just your laundry. I'm sure Tenchi's old man will be so disappointed to hear it."

"How can you say such a thing when Lord Nobuyuki isn't even back from his _honeymoon_? _Disgraceful_!" Aeka gasped, then gave a sigh. "Ugh, you could have just put them back inside, instead of parading about the _yard_ with them," she insisted, face scrunched up in irritation. "What if Lord Tenchi had seen you with them?"

"It isn't like I was wearing them on my _head_ , Aeka," she said, giving the princess an incredulous look. She rolled her eyes as Aeka scowled at her as hard as she possibly could. "Oh, _please_ , Tenchi's seen a lot more than your skivvies before, anyway, why does it even matter?"

Aeka's whole face was suddenly approximately the color of Washuu's hair. Okay, so Tenchi had gotten a full frontal view in the onsen before, but it had been completely by accident! Why did Ryoko always have to bring up awkward moments like this?

Ryoko just sighed again.

"You really make it way too easy," she said, the strange tail at the small of her back curling into a question mark shape as she reached out to gingerly poke the center of Aeka's forehead. "Thank me. I put the drying rack back inside your room so you wouldn't lose any more, jeez."

Aeka jerked back and made a puzzled noise, and Ryoko leaned away again, crossing her legs at the knee and reclining as though in a chair that couldn't be seen. She closed one eye, regarding Aeka seriously for a moment, then just snorted in amusement again and twisted in the air before zipping away back toward the house. She watched her go, then frowned down at the clothing in her arms. Every time she thought she had Ryoko figured out, it was like she completely reshuffled the deck and Aeka had to start over. No sooner did the two of them find some common ground over breakfast than they were bickering bitterly over Tenchi's affections at lunch. Hardly had they butted heads over who got to sit next to him on the sofa when a crisis would arise and have them working together like fitted cogs to help him. It seemed that the only thing they _ever_ managed to completely agree on was that Tenchi was, ultimately, more important than any stupid fight between the two of them, but that certainly didn't mean there weren't days Aeka wished Ryoko was still sealed away down in that cave by the shrine.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. No, that was a cruel thought, she told herself, fussing with the shirts a moment before she headed back toward the house to return them to the laundry basket. Even if Ryoko drove her up the wall (or _through_ it, from time to time), she wouldn't have sincerely wished for her to be imprisoned that way again. (In a moment of anger, certainly, but never sincerely.) She had been surprised to realize that it wasn't solely because she knew Tenchi would have been devastated by the very idea, either. Aeka had always thought she could have lived quite contentedly without Ryoko's pervasive and rambunctious antics always interrupting the flow of her day, but as much as she hated to admit it, she had come to think of her as an obnoxious delinquent older sister, in a way. Even if she never really did act her age. Or even a fraction of it.

"Aeka, did you find them all?" Sasami asked, standing on the footstool and carefully pinning a pair of Tenchi's hakama to the clothesline while Ryo-Ohki munched on a carrot beside the basket of still-wet clothes.

"I did," Aeka replied, dropping the shirts into the basket of clean, dry clothes and quickly stuffing the escaped panties into her sleeve. "It's good this is the last load," she said then, brushing her hair out of her face; "the wind is really picking up. I'm not sure this load will get dry without a few pieces trying to... escape."

Sasami giggled. "Well, that's a funny way to put it," she said, hopping down off the stool and moving it over to hang the next pair of hakama.

"Here, let me do that," Aeka said. "The footstool makes it too much hassle for you, why don't you take the clean basket inside?"

"All right!" Sasami said cheerfully, folding up the stool and leaning it against the clothesline support pole before grabbing the basket and skipping back toward the house. "C'mon, Li'l Ryo!" she called, and the cabbit yowled loudly, grabbing the rest of the carrot in her teeth and bounding after the little princess.

Aeka watched them go with a smile on her face, then quickly set to hanging the rest of the laundry to dry. Giving the last pair of hakama a good tug at the seams, she cast her eyes to the sky again, wondering what this wind could possibly be bringing their way, before she picked up the empty basket and headed toward the house. Stepping into the sunken entryway and toeing off her shoes, she set the basket down near the door so she could use it to go retrieve the dry laundry in a couple of hours, then moved toward the sitting room. Sliding the door open and poking her head inside, she spotted the usual group gathered around the eating table with drinks and rice crackers and a plate of dumplings.

"And when the old couple tried to eat the peach, they found a _boy_ inside!" Katsuhito said, and then guffawed loudly as Sasami looked utterly gobsmacked by the very idea. Aeka wasn't certain she'd ever get entirely used to the idea that her regal, dignified elder brother Yosho was actually this silly old man, but there were still times when his true nature showed itself. Her feelings for Yosho remained, even if they were now dwarfed by her affections for Tenchi, and the whole thing was still very strange and complicated for her, but she supposed that in the end, what mattered was that she _had_ found him, and he was all right and still a part of her and Sasami's lives.

"But, Sir Katsuhito, that can't be right," Washuu said from her seat at the corner of the table, bumping the knuckle of her thumb against her chin. "There's no way a human baby would be able to fit inside a peach, even if it _was_ a very big peach. The baby would have to have been a fetus, and no fetus could _survive_ inside a peach." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Unless it had been _very_ genetically modified," she amended.

"What in the world are you all talking about?" Aeka asked, eyes wide as she approached the table and sat down in her usual spot. "Babies and peaches?"

"Oh, my dear Aeka, there are so many wonderful stories that this world has to tell," Katsuhiko said, wagging a finger at her, and then he looked at Washuu with a smile. "Even if they seem a bit silly," he added, "they're not really meant to be taken literally."

"Grandpa, are you telling stories again?" came a voice from the stairs, and Aeka turned with a bright smile.

"Lord Tenchi, there you are," she said. "I was just noticing your absence."

"Well, _I_ noticed your absence as soon as I came back inside," Ryoko said sweetly, leaning her elbows on the table and batting her eyelashes at Tenchi. Aeka scowled at her, but Tenchi seemed all too used to this sort of one-upping between them and didn't really pay it much mind.

"I am _not_ just telling any old stories, Tenchi, my boy," Katsuhito assured him, waving a rice cracker at him before taking a bite. "I was telling Sasami the tale of Momotarou."

"Oh!" Tenchi said, taking his seat at the table between Aeka and Ryoko and reaching for one of the crackers. "Man, it's been ages since I heard that one," he said, a nostalgic look on his face. He looked at Sasami with a big smile. "You know that story is said to have originated right here in Okayama?"

"Tenchi, did a boy _really_ come out of a peach?" Sasami asked worriedly, and Tenchi laughed, waving a hand.

"Not literally," he assured her, accepting the cup of tea that Katsuhito offered him. "It's just a fable, Sasami; it's more meant to be an exciting story with a good message for kids than anything else."

"Brother, would you start again?" Aeka asked politely. "I've never heard this story either, so I'd like to hear it from the beginning."

"Of course, of course," he said, casting his eyes around the table and then taking a sip of his tea. "Let's see, back to the beginning..." He cleared his throat. "Once upon a time, there lived an old man and an old woman, in a cottage by a river. They were quite poor, and had to work hard to make ends meet, as they had never been able to have a child to help them get along in their old age. The old man spent his days cutting grass and reaping fields for the nearby farmers, and while he was away, the old woman tended their home and their own small rice field and vegetable patch.

"One day, the old woman went down to the riverside to wash the laundry, and while she was working, she happened to notice a big, beautiful, perfect peach bobbing gently downstream. In all her years, she had never seen such a big, perfect peach, and she thought to herself that she simply _had_ to have it to take home to her husband. Retrieving the peach from the water, the woman finished washing the laundry, and hurried home to hang it to dry, and to wait for her husband to return."

"I would'a eaten it right then and there," Ryoko remarked, sipping at her sake. "I mean, why share when you can have the whole thing, right?"

"You mean you wouldn't have saved any for Sir Tenchi?" Washu said slyly, and Ryoko's eyes widened. She snapped her head toward Tenchi, who just looked a little uncomfortable, and then glowered at Washuu.

"Well of _course_ I would have saved some fo—" She growled and hunched her shoulders, scowling into her cup, and her amber eyes flicked toward Katsuhito. "Carry on."

Katsuhito cleared his throat again.

"Ah, so... where was I? Oh yes," he said, and twisted his cup between his hands. "So the old woman brought the big, perfect peach home and waited all day for her husband to return. When he did, she proudly showed him the giant peach, and he was amazed. 'Wherever did you buy this?' he asked. 'You must have used all our savings!'

"'Oh, but I didn't buy it, darling,' the woman replied," Katsuhito went on, using a rather ridiculous falsetto voice for the old woman, "'I found it in the river!'"

"I hope she washed it," Ryoko said into her sake. "Fish pee in rivers like... all day long, you know?" There was a beat of unimpressed silence, and then Washuu kicked her sharply under the table, and she just grunted in pain, doubling forward. "C... Carry on."

Giving a sigh, Katsuhito pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. "The old man was delighted by this, and urged the old woman to get a knife so that they could cut the peach and eat it together," he said. "When the old woman cut into the peach, however, she gave a cry of alarm and jumped backward as a _baby boy_ emerged from within!"

"And this is where the exclamation, 'son of a peach!' comes from," Ryoko said importantly, lifting one finger in the air. She gave another grunt of pain as both Washuu _and_ Aeka kicked her sharply this time, and dropped her head onto the table. "C... Carry on."

Ryoko's interruption notwithstanding, Aeka was intrigued. "I do hope they didn't injure the baby when they cut into the peach," she said, and Katsuhito looked stumped for a moment.

"You know, the story never specifies one way or the other," he admitted, sipping at his tea again.

"I feel like that would be a very _different_ sort of story," Ryoko said dryly, nibbling at a cracker, and Washuu snickered.

"I'm sure he was fine, though," Katsuhito said then, shaking his head. "In any case, the boy told the old couple that the gods had heard their lamentations that they had never been able to have a child, so he had been sent from Heaven to be their son. Overjoyed by this news, they named the boy Momotarou—Momo, for the peach that had brought him to them, and Tarou, meaning first son."

At the mention of the name Tarou, Aeka cast a slightly unsettled glance toward Ryoko, who returned the look wearily. Tarou had been a wonderful, sweet baby, but if all babies were that much work, Aeka wasn't sure she was ready to be a mother anytime in the immediate future (even if they would inevitably be her beloved Tenchi's children).

"Years passed," Katsuhito went on, "and Momotarou grew into a kind and strong young man. He was much stronger and much wiser than any other boy his age, and worked hard every day to try and make his parents' lives easier. One day, when Momotarou was fifteen years of age, he went to his father and asked him, 'Father, do you trust me?', and of course his father replied that he did. 'If you trust me, Father, then you must let me go away,' Momotarou said, and his father was greatly dismayed by this request. They had only just been blessed with such a wonderful child, and now he wished to leave them? What had they done wrong?

"Then Momotarou explained that on an island far to the north, there was a vicious demon," Katsuhito said. "The demon would attack anyone they came across on the mainland, steal all of their belongings, and then and carry them off to its island, where they would be tortured and finally devoured."

"Hmm, for some reason that reminds me of someone..." Aeka said with a lilt in her voice. "I wonder who I could possibly be thinking of...?"

This time Ryoko was the one to do the kicking under the table.

"I never _ate_ anybody," she insisted fiercely, though she notably didn't deny anything else about the comparison.

"Girls, girls, let's let Sir Katsuhito finish the story, okay?" Washuu asked with an uneasy chuckle. Ryoko folded her arms with a harrumph, and Aeka just took a moment to feel victorious.

"Anyway," Katsuhito said. "So Momotarou left his old parents and promised he would come home victorious as he headed northward, headed for the Isle of the Demon. Along the way, he had to pass through a great field, and as he did so, a huge dog came rushing toward him, its teeth bared fiercely. 'How dare you cross my field without permission!' the dog snarled, and—"

"But dogs can't talk!" Sasami pointed out, shaking her head, and both Katsuhito and Tenchi laughed brightly.

"It's just a story, Sasami," Tenchi reminded her. "Like a fairy tale. You can't really wake a sleeping princess under a spell with a kiss, either, right?"

"I'm willing to put Aeka into a coma to test the theory," Ryoko volunteered, raising her hand.

Aeka kneejerk bristled in indignation, then arched one eyebrow. "Ohh, so you _want_ Lord Tenchi to kiss me?" she asked coyly. "I see!"

"Pfft, no," Ryoko said, gesturing to Katsuhito with her thumb. "Gramps here is the high prince whatever of Jurai, right? Have _him_ do it. You still have the hots for Yosho anyhow, I've seen the hologram figurine in your room."

" _Miss_ Ryoko, that is _none of your_ —"

Katsuhito cleared his throat loudly, and Aeka cut off her snappish retort, biting her tongue and suddenly looking very interested in her tea, her face burning with embarrassment. Usually the sniping between her and Ryoko was harmless, but this time the other woman had hit a nerve, and Aeka hunched her shoulders uncomfortably.

Katsuhito continued the story, telling them how the dog changed its tune when it learned of Momotarou's quest to defeat the demon, and eagerly joined him on his journey. Along the way, Momotarou was also befriended by a monkey from the hills, and a pheasant from the plains, but his companions fought bitterly the whole way, the dog hating the monkey, and the both of them envious of the bird's beautiful plumage and fighting abilities.

"'My friends, you must not fight amongst yourselves,' said Momotarou," Katsuhito said, and by now the whole table was listening intently, Ryoko and Aeka's bickering mostly forgotten. "'It is only when an army has peace within itself that it is capable of defeating evil. You must be friends of one mind if we are to defeat the demon, and the first of you to next start a fight will be sent home without a second chance!'"

"See, now there's a guy who knew how to handle his troublemaking friends who couldn't get along," Washuu laughed, reaching for one of the sticks of dumplings on the plate in the center of the table. She gestured to Tenchi with it, grinning. "You should be more forceful when these two biddies are fighting over you, Sir Tenchi. Be like Sir Momotarou."

Tenchi made a noise in the back of his throat and glanced from Washuu to Aeka to Ryoko, and then laughed nervously and busied himself pouring another cup of tea. Ryoko huffed.

"I can't help it if Aeka is an annoying hill-monkey," she said, her lips pursed, and Aeka scowled at her.

"How _rude_ ," she said. "I am _obviously_ the beautiful pheasant of whom everyone is jealous."

"Does that make me the dog?" Washuu asked, tilting her head.

"Well _I'm_ not the monkey," Ryoko assured them, and Aeka laughed through her nose.

"Oh, surely not," she said, lifting her cup of tea to her lips; "you're the wicked old demon Lord Momotarou is on a quest to defeat, of course."

She expected Ryoko to snarl and gnash her teeth and possibly throw crackers at her. She expected further bickering and maybe even a bit of pounding on the table. What she did not expect was for Ryoko to fall silent and give her a plainly stung look, her eyes narrowed with visible injury. Aeka realized far too belatedly that she had crossed a line. Ryoko's origins had been a point of contention between them long ago, but it had been over a year since she'd really stopped thinking of Ryoko as nothing but The Demon of Destruction who had razed half of Jurai. Ryoko had never _apologized_ for her actions all those centuries ago, but she had made it clear that she had never really had any quarrel with Jurai personally, and had only been following orders when she had attacked Jurai in the first place.

Ryoko's teasing was a constant in their lives that they had all come to expect, and while her remark about Yosho may have struck a nerve, it rankled her largely because there was a kernel of truth to it. Aeka hadn't intended to be cruel in retaliation. She thought herself better than someone who would stoop to such name-calling, and lifted a hand, shaking her head.

"Miss Ryoko, I didn't mean—"

"Uncalled for, princess," was all Ryoko said before shimmering out of view and reappearing on her favorite perch—the rafter overlooking the front room—the tail on her dress lashing irately.

"R-Ryoko," Tenchi called, but Ryoko didn't reply, and Tenchi sighed and pulled at the back of his neck.

"Maybe we should finish the story another time," Aeka said quietly, lowering her eyes, and Tenchi shook his head.

"It's okay," he said, smiling gently. "If she was really mad and wanted to be alone, she'd have gone to the roof, not the rafter. She's just sulking."

"I can still _hear_ you, you know?" Ryoko's tail lashed harder, and Sasami hid a giggle behind one hand. Aeka supposed Tenchi had a point, though: Ryoko could easily have gone anywhere, but she'd chosen to simply move to a different part of the same room.

She would apologize later.

"Go ahead and finish, Grandpa," Tenchi said, casting a fond, if hopeless, smile toward the rafter where Ryoko's tail still hung over the edge, snapping back and forth in irritation.

Katsuhito went on to tell them how Momotarou reached the shores of northern Japan and took a small boat across the rough seas to get to the demon's island. Once there, he sought the help of two women the demon had sworn to eat if they did not do all of his work for him, and they eagerly led Momotarou to the demon's throne room, where a great battle took place.

"Eventually, the demon surrendered to Momotarou, having seen that his strength was far greater than that of any mortal man," Katsuhito said. "The demon dropped to its knees and tore the horns from its head, offering them to Momotarou as a token of submission, as they were the source of its power. Though Momotarou knew that the demon had terrorized and killed many people, he took pity on the miserable creature, and instead of killing it, he imprisoned it in the hills, charging his monkey companion with making certain the demon never broke free to harm anyone again.

"Once all the prisoners on the island had been set free, Momotarou returned home victorious, the demon's bountiful treasure in his arms. All of Japan hailed him as a hero for having defeated the demon and locked it away, and his parents were overjoyed that their son had come home safely. They were able to live off the demon's treasure from that day forth, never needing to work another hard day for the rest of their lives."

"That's a nice ending," Washuu said with a nod. "I'm glad his parents were finally able to live comfortably."

"And the demon never escaped?" Sasami asked, tilting her head. "I mean, I'm happy that Mister Momotarou took pity and didn't kill it, but was the monkey able to keep the demon sealed up after that?"

Katsuhito laughed softly. "That's as far as the story goes, Sasami," he said, "but I like to think the demon didn't give anyone any more trouble after that."

"Momotarou would have just beaten it again, right?" Tenchi pointed out, and Sasami seemed satisfied with this answer.

"Sir Tenchi, you said that story originated here in Okayama, right? Are there a lot of peach trees around here?" Washuu wanted to know, and Tenchi pursed his lips.

"Okayama's white peaches are the most delicious peaches in all of Japan," Katsuhito assured her, reaching for a dumpling himself.

"I know there's an orchard not far from here, actually," Tenchi said then. "I think my dad knows the family who owns it. The season is almost over, but we might still be able to go and pick a few peaches if you guys want, maybe next week. I'll see if I can give them a call."

"Could we really?" Sasami asked excitedly. "Maybe we'll find a giant peach with a baby inside, too!" She looked at Aeka, her face split with a huge grin. "Wouldn't that be amazing, sis?"

Aeka gave a nervous laugh, thinking to herself that if they actually did cut into a peach and find a baby, she would probably faint.

Sasami got to her feet and hurried over to the other side of the room, standing beneath Ryoko's rafter to peer up at her.

"Ryoko, you'll come too, right?" she asked. "You could reach the _best_ peaches, all the way at the tops of the trees."

Ryoko turned and looked down at Sasami, one arm dangling over the edge of the beam. "I could," she said, resting her chin in her other palm, "but what if I just ate them all myself, like a nasty, wicked, selfish demon?"

Aeka flinched, hunching her shoulders and cradling her tea in both hands.

"You would never do that," Sasami said assuredly, as if Ryoko made these sorts of jokes at her own expense all the time. "You're too nice."

"Am I~?" Ryoko's eyes winged toward the ceiling, and she rolled back over, folding her hands behind her head and leaning back into her pillow. "I dunno, Sasami, you might be the only one who feels that way," she said, her tone deliberately maudlin, and Sasami just laughed. Aeka wondered sometimes how Sasami managed to stay so cheerful most of the time; she seemed to always be able to see the best in everyone, even Ryoko.

"Come on, Ryoko, don't be a poor sport," Tenchi chided, casting a dry grin across the room, and Ryoko twisted to lay on her stomach, gazing at him mournfully.

"But Ten _chi_ ~ didn't you hear what she _said_ to me?" she complained, pouting as hard as she could.

"You know she didn't mean it," Tenchi sighed, shaking his head hopelessly. "Like you've never said something you regret two seconds later."

Ryoko's pout became a guilty sort of glower, and she folded one arm across the rafter, resting her chin on it. "That's a complete and total lie," she said stiffly. "I've never regretted anything ever."

"Sasami, why don't you go help Lord Tenchi put away that last basket of laundry?" Aeka asked after a beat of silence, "and I'll fold ours."

"Okay, sis," Sasami said, turning and giving her sister a broad smile. She looked at Tenchi then, and squared her small shoulders. "Tenchi, I folded your hakama right last time, didn't I?" she asked, and Tenchi nodded.

"You did!" he said. "You did a great job, it's tough to remember all the steps."

Aeka watched them climb the stairs up to the second floor, then helped Katsuhito and Washuu gather up the cups and plates from the table before excusing herself to head to the bedroom she shared with her sister. She paused at the top of the stairs to look out over the rafter where Ryoko was still laying on her stomach, her arm folded across the pillow and her chin resting on it. She hesitated, inhaled to speak, then hesitated again. Oh, why was this always so hard? The rivalry between the two of them was mostly ceremonial anymore; she might have hated Ryoko once upon a time, back before she'd gotten to know her, before she'd had any understanding of what Kagato had done to her, but that had been a long time ago. Even if Ryoko was still brash and abrasive and downright rude at times, she had risked her life on more than one occasion to help the rest of them, and Aeka was confident that Ryoko wouldn't have hesitated to sacrifice herself for Tenchi's sake. Ryoko was her friend, even if the amenability was strained at times.

"I'm not mad," Ryoko's voice lilted softly across the distance between them, and Aeka made a startled noise, her eyes snapping toward the rafter. Ryoko had rolled over onto her back and was peering at her now, eyes half-open, a thin, crooked grin across her lips.

"I didn't really care if you were," Aeka fibbed brazenly, and then sighed. "But... I _didn't_ mean what I said." She shook her head. "Sometimes I want to strangle you, it's true, but you have to know I don't think that about you anymore."

Ryoko crossed one leg over the other and waved a hand in the air. "Princess, you _seriously_ make this way too easy," she snickered, closing her eyes and folding her hands together behind her head again. "I don't even have to _try_ anymore, you're like zero to manic in 2.6 seconds."

Aeka waited where she stood. Ryoko did tease her rather relentlessly, but the stung look on the other woman's face had been genuine, when she'd seen it from across the table. For all Ryoko liked to act as though nothing got to her, Aeka knew it was a lie. She had been genuinely hurt, if only for a moment, and Aeka wasn't going to just walk away until this had been resolved.

About fifteen seconds passed in silence, and then Ryoko opened her eyes once more, giving Aeka an incredulous look. "What, you're still here?" she asked, and made a shooing gesture with one hand. "Weren't you going to go fold laundry?" she asked.

"Miss Ryoko..." Aeka held her ground, her expression neutral leaning toward insistent, and Ryoko sighed.

"Seriously, I'm not mad," she said, her eyes sincere even as she rolled them pointedly. "I know you didn't mean it, I'm not angry, okay? It's fine. We're fine. Go do your damn laundry, _shit_." She shifted and let one leg dangle over the edge of the rafter, bouncing her foot. "Who knew you were such a Nervous Nellie? So worried about everybody liking you, making sure nobody's upset with you, it's _ridiculous_! Don't teach Sasami to be so neurotic, okay? _So_ not cute. It's just not even..."

Aeka rolled her eyes and headed into her bedroom as Ryoko continued her diatribe from the rafter, and she could still hear the other woman complaining even as she slid the door closed. Reaching for the basket of clean laundry Sasami had brought upstairs earlier, Aeka knelt on the tatami and pulled one of her dresses from the pile, shaking it and then laying it across the floor to fold (making certain she removed that pair of panties from her sleeve before she forgot about it and it wound up creating a very awkward situation later on). She would probably never really fully understand how Ryoko truly worked, even if she cohabitated with her for the next 700 years, but even thus, she felt like maybe she understood her a _little_ bit more with each day that passed, and she guessed she would take what she could get.

ミ

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so my friend Kana is a terrible person and got me back into this fandom like 84 years later and of course i immediately decided i had to try my hand at writing these old characters i have loved for so long. because i need more projects, right?

and because i'm already an insane masochist, i was like, i know, i'll include a little pencil doodle in each chapter, like a Light Novel! because i need to draw more! but because this site has lame formatting restrictions i can't upload any doodles here. if you check me out on AO3, though, you can see! i can't leave links here, thanks to formatting restrictions yet again, but my authorname is kawree over there.

anyway, couple small notes for those of you who are familiar with the official translations of the show: i threw them out the window. there is no 'ye' in Japanese, so i nixed that in Aeka's name, because while 'Ayeka'... kind of looks better aesthetically, it's wrong and has always kind of annoyed me. one of the things i like about Tenchi Muyo is that it's actually a very Japanese show. like yes, all anime is Japanese, but aside from the fact that he's living with a bunch of babes from outer space, Tenchi lives in a traditional Japanese family who owns a shrine and it's just. very Japanese. so i get to make cultural references i don't get to make in most of my other fandoms, and this makes me happy. because despite my weebage, i love Japanese culture and language just as much as i love anime and manga and video games, so it's really nice to get to write for a series that i can use what i know about the culture in my work. that being said, more shit i defenestrated: the fact that the official translations didn't use most of the honorifics anyone uses in the show. honorifics are important, kids. i didn't translate Sasami calling everyone onii/onee-chan, because as FMA has shown us, it's just kind of weird to call someone [SIBLING] in English, but i was so disappointed that they went out of their way to include 'Li'l Washuu' but never acknowledged that Aeka and Washuu use two completely different sorts of honorifics for everyone and it's actually really interesting, to me? Aeka is a princess, so she calls Tenchi and the others -sama, which is basically lord or lady, as most of you probably know, it's just generic polite speech. Washuu calls people -dono, though, which is similar, but it's a notably more formal and almost archaic suffix, so i'm rolling with sir and dame, like you would call someone who's been knighted, for example, because i think it bears noting that they do use different suffixes, and... well, Washuu is like over 20,000 years old, so a little archaic speech is to be expected.

also the fact that Aeka calls Ryoko with the -san suffix and Ryoko uses no honorifics at all, these are both relevant, okay. additionally, Ryo-Ohki gets called Ryo-chan, but that isn't even acknowledged, so i am now aggressively acknowledging it. idk, including 'Li'l Washuu' but not 'Li'l Ryo' just seemed weird, to me, like why you gonna cherry-pick your honorifics like that, Pioneer, hm?

(does this fandom even exist anymore?)


	2. Heat of the Moment

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 **Chapter Two: Heat of the Moment**

 _In which there are freebies. And questionable life choices._

ミ

In general, Ryoko really hated being alone. Between having spent seven centuries imprisoned beneath tons of rock, and many more centuries before that serving as the tool of a madman, she had lived the majority of her life in solitude, and it hadn't really bothered her at the time. It was true, she had realized retrospectively, that you really _didn't_ know what you were missing until you were given a taste of it; her earliest memories were of Kagato's cruelty, his harsh words and merciless training, and as she had had no frame of reference back then, she had simply assumed that was what was normal. It hadn't been _fun_ , certainly, but she'd never known anything else, and so had simply assumed that was how life was. Tenchi and his family were the first people who had ever truly treated her _kindly_ , and there were times it still caught her off guard. She had been welcomed into their home like a member of the family (albeit a bit reluctantly at first), and for that, Ryoko felt eternally beholden to the Masakis (even if it had been a Masaki that had imprisoned her beneath aforementioned tons of rock in the first place).

Of course, she would never _admit_ to such a thing. Imagine! The great space pirate Ryoko, indebted to a family of Earthians of _Juraian_ ancestry, of all things. She would never hear the end of it.

So yes, in general, now that Ryoko had surrounded herself with good people, people who cared about her for who she was rather than just what she could do for them, she spent most of her time with them, and considered herself fortunate to be in such company. That being said, sometimes sharing a roof with so many other people got a little too hectic; even those who had had more than their fill of isolation needed a little time to themselves once in a while. Between Aeka and Noike bickering over the princess' questionable cooking methods and Sasami's shrill pleading for them to just get along and get out of the kitchen so she could start dinner, the house had felt a little too noisy in the moment, and upon discovering that their stash of sake had been depleted (to absolutely no one's surprise), she had quickly volunteered to just head into town to buy more.

It was still quite windy as she made her way through the trees, but flying against the wind always made it feel like she was going twice as fast, and she couldn't help the grin on her face as she dodged branches. The sun had nearly set, leaving the sky blood red to the west and inky indigo to the east, and Ryoko laughed out loud, flying as fast as she could and twisting through the sharp curves of the road that led down the hillside toward the more populated areas of Okayama. Tenchi scolded her sometimes, for recklessly flying where others could see her, but at this time of the evening, the chances of there being anyone on this beaten earth road were slim to none, and there was nothing quite like zooming down the mountainside like an Eirusian speeder on the final lap. She could have just teleported into town, and the whole trip would have taken a fraction of the time, but Ryoko didn't get many opportunities to pull out all the stops and just fly at top speed, so sometimes taking the long way, as it were, was worth it.

She dropped back to the ground just on the outskirts of the little shopping area at the edge of town, smoothing the front of her dress and adjusting her hair, which was rather windblown from her trip. The Masakis' shrine was much too far from Okayama's main city to do any shopping there, but there were several smaller clusters of stores between the mountainside and the larger cityscape, and Ryoko had found a particular small liquor store was especially to her liking. The shop owner was quite the alcohol connoisseur himself, and had often slipped her a small bottle of his own personal brew at a deep discount, for being a loyal customer. She rounded a corner and smiled as the fluorescent sign came into view-simple white katakana against a blue background that read 'Seijuu Spirits'-and jogged across the narrow roadway. Pushing the door open to the tinkle of bells above the ingress, she heard a distant call of welcome from the counter and tilted her head. That was a voice she didn't recognize.

"Yo," she greeted casually as she rounded a display of imported rum, spying an unfamiliar face behind the counter. She was tall, unusually tall for a Japanese woman, anyway, with dark eyes and shoulder-length hair bleached burnt orange. Ryoko's eyes flicked to her nametag: Takanashi. "Ah, you must be new," she said jovially, approaching the counter to lean her hip against it, arms folded across her chest. "I'm in here like once a week, and I've never seen you before."

The young woman smiled brightly. "Ah! You must be the infamous Miss Ryoko," she said, and Ryoko's smile faltered a little.

"Infamous?" she echoed nervously. Certainly infamy was more fun than plain old fame, but she wasn't sure that was the reputation she wanted in her favorite booze establishment.

The girl behind the counter laughed, shaking her head, then bowed politely. "Poor choice of words, my apologies," she said. "I'm Takanashi. Takanashi Chiaki, I was just hired here a few days ago." She lifted her head again and gave Ryoko a broad smile. "Mr. Seijuu told me that if a pretty lady with silvery hair came in, to treat her nice, because she's his favorite customer. I'm honored to meet you!"

Ryoko's brain had snagged on the words 'pretty lady', and she ran a hand back through her wild hair self-consciously. Maybe she wasn't the most ladylike person around, but she was still a woman, and she still appreciated a compliment. Seijuu was kind of a perv, but Ryoko of all people welcomed a well-timed lewd joke, and if he thought she was pretty enough to get discounts on good alcohol, she wasn't going to complain.

Realizing she'd gone quiet, Ryoko stopped fussing with her hair and looked back up at Chiaki, her expression sly.

"He said all that, huh?" she asked, then snorted a laugh. "Where is that old bastard, anyhow? Leaving the place to the newbie right off the bat?"

Chiaki shook her head. "Oh, gracious, no," she gasped, shaking her head. "He hasn't even taught me all the closing procedures yet." She pointed toward the front window. "He went across the street to buy cigarettes half an hour ago," she said. "I assume he got distracted by the magazine rack."

Ryoko laughed softly. "Undoubtedly," she said, and then lifted her chin a bit. "Did he at least tell you my usual order?" she asked then, and Chiaki reached for a sticky note that had been laminated in packaging tape, holding it up.

"He posted this here in case you ever encountered anyone new," she said, smiling. "That way there was no risk of messing anything up."

"Good man," Ryoko said, skimming over the scrawly barely-legible handwriting, and then giving Chiaki a nod. "Just the usual, then," she said, reaching into her pocket for some money.

Chiaki ducked into the back room for a moment and then returned with two large oblong jugs of house sake, then reached beneath the counter to produce one more item: a tall, narrow bottle with an elegant neck and delicate stylized calligraphy scrawled across the front.

"Mr. Seijuu said to offer you this as well," she said. "It's a promotional bottle of a new product he's hoping to market sometime in the near future. He was hoping you'd give him your honest opinion on the flavor."

Ryoko blinked, then reached for the bottle and examined the calligraphy closely. Though she'd had all of Tenchi's childhood to learn to _speak_ Japanese fluently, she still had difficulty deciphering some handwritten kanji, and squinted at the shiny, silver lettering along the navy blue glass of the bottle.

"Whassit say?" she asked, frowning up at Chiaki. "Snow embarrassment? I never could read Seijuu's chickenscratch."

Chiaki laughed. "He calls it 'Vindication'," she said, "but you're right, individually that's what the kanji mean."

Ryoko shook her head. "Not sure I'll ever get the writing system in this country," she said, knowing she at least looked the part of a foreigner enough to get away with a little good-natured ribbing. "'Embarrassed snow' means vindication, 'horizontal rice' means Western food..." She shrugged. "I guess you get points for creativity."

"He chose that word because he liked the imagery of the snow," Chiaki said. "He said it should taste like victory on a cold day."

Ryoko made a _huh_ sound, smiling as she set the bottle back down. "In that case, I'll make sure to give him my thoughts. How much do I owe ya?"

"Just the usual amount," Chiaki said, sliding the bottle of Vindication back toward her. "He said this one is on the house. He's hoping you'll have good things to say about it."

"Free is my favorite price," Ryoko said, thumbing through the yen notes in her little money pouch and handing them to Chiaki, who placed her change in the small plastic tray on the countertop. She dropped the coins back into the pouch and then slung the two jugs of sake over her shoulder by the twisted ropes that were looped around their necks. "Got a bag for the freebie?" she asked. "I'm hoofing it home, and I don't want to risk dropping it."

"Oh, certainly," Chiaki said, finding a paper bag and carefully setting the glass bottle inside, stuffing some newspaper on either side of it for cushioning. "There you go, safe as houses."

"I appreciate it," Ryoko said, nodding her head to the young woman and then heading for the door. "Don't let Seijuu push you around, okay?" she called as she shoved the door open with her foot. "And if he puts his hands on you, you tell him Ryoko's gonna come cut his balls off with a fish scaler."

Chiaki looked very worried all of a sudden, like she wasn't sure if she was allowed to say such things to her boss, but Ryoko didn't bother to reassure her. She seemed like a smart kid, she would figure it out.

Stepping out into the autumn evening, Ryoko took a deep breath, then blew it out in a sigh. All right, to teleport home with her fancy new sake, or to take the opportunity to fly as fast as she could one more time without running the risk of being scolded? Decisions, decisions. Figuring she was never certain when she would have the next opportunity to avoid being chastised for her behavior, she opted to fly back. Teleportation was convenient, of course, but it wasn't really as much _fun_ , and Ryoko rarely passed up an opportunity to have a good time. Flying with the sake would be more of a challenge, but she'd never backed down from one of those, either. Besides, she found the sake always tasted funny after she teleported with it. So she tapped the toe of her shoe against the sidewalk and jogged back across the street, headed for the edge of town where she'd landed on her way in.

She had made it about halfway up the hill when the first raindrops hit her in the face.

"Rain?" she said with dismay, and then let out a startled cry when the heavens opened up without warning. Ryoko snarled in annoyance and debated the merits of just teleporting the rest of the way, funny taste be damned, but then remembered that extra bottle of Embarrassed Vindicated Snow from Seijuu, and snarled again. Dammit, she couldn't risk ruining the flavor of the shop owner's special sake he'd given her as a _gift_. That would be rude even beyond Ryoko's tolerance levels of impertinence.

Ugh, she _hated_ the rain, though... Why couldn't it have waited just another five minutes?

Clutching the bag with the free sake against her chest so the paper didn't soak through and tear and send her special brew plummeting to earth, Ryoko darted forward, squinting as the rain pelted her face and flattened her hair against her head. By the time she made it back to the Masaki farm, she was soaked to the skin and beyond irritated about it, sliding the door open with a little too much force and swiftly setting the two big jugs of sake down in the entryway, wringing her hands and swiping her sopping hair off her brow. She rested the wet bag with the free bottle beside the first two and then sort of shook herself like a dog, feeling clammy and uncomfortable. The door that led into the front room slid open and Sasami poked her head out to see what the noise was about, then beamed brightly.

"Ryoko, welcome back!" she said, and then her expression fell a bit. "Ah, oh no, you're soaked!"

"Yeah, it started pouring when I was about halfway back," she said, reaching up and twisting her hair between her hands like a wet rag.

"Wait right there, I'll get you a towel!" Sasami said, and Ryoko startled.

"Huh? Wait, no, you don't-"

But the little princess was already gone, and Ryoko hefted a sigh. It was easy enough for her to just conjure up some dry clothes, but she guessed a towel for her hair wasn't a bad idea. She wrung it between her hands again and then looked up when Sasami returned.

"Here you go," Sasami said, handing her a fluffy yellow towel, and Ryoko draped it over her head, scrubbing at it vigorously with both hands.

"Thanks, kiddo," she said, and when she pulled the towel away her hair stuck out in all directions. Sasami giggled, and Ryoko just stuck her tongue out in response. With a wave of her hand, she replaced her wet outfit with her favorite comfy blue and gold striped dress, then tossed the towel across her shoulders and attempted to realign her hair.

"That's like the most convenient superpower ever," Sasami said, shaking her head and looking impressed. "Think of all the cool costume changes you could do if you were a pop idol."

Ryoko snorted. "I'll keep that in mind next karaoke night," she said, finally satisfied with her coif, and then dropped the towel onto Sasami's head. "Did you finally manage to kick Noike and your sister out of the kitchen?"

"Mmhm," she said, shifting the towel so it looked like a hood. "Dinner's almost ready, I'm making oyakodon."

"Oh, the thing with the egg?" Ryoko asked, stepping up out of the entryway and grabbing the sake bottles. "I like that stuff."

She still struggled with determining whether or not something was delicious, a lot of the time, but she was starting to get the hang of it. 700 years of not eating anything at all while in stasis in a cave had a way of killing any sense of taste one might have had at any time, so it had been a slow process of learning what did and did not go well together. After trying her own hand at cooking once or twice, she had learned definitively that when it came to soy sauce and wasabi and curry paste, less was usually more. At least that was what Tenchi and Aeka had said. She had thought it tasted just fine. (Though she _had_ wondered why she had been so thirsty for the rest of the night.)

"I added carrots, for Li'l Ryo, and some peppers, to give it a little bit of a kick," Sasami said, reaching down to pick up the soggy bag with the special sake in it. "Did you get something different this time?"

"Oh, the shop owner had a special something he's thinking of selling in the future. He wanted me to try it and give him an opinion," she said, slinging the two big jugs over her shoulder and reaching for the bag. "Here, gimme that, Aeka'll have a conniption if she sees you with it." Even though Sasami was, technically, over 700 years old.

Sasami hung the towel over the railing by the stairs, then followed Ryoko into the other room, sliding the door closed behind them.

"Hey, there you are," Tenchi greeted, turning his attention away from the holo-television screen Washuu had installed by the eating table. "The weather all of a sudden took a turn, we were just starting to wonder-" His expression suddenly crinkled with worry. "Oh, your hair's all wet," he said; "did you get caught in the rain?"

Ryoko waved a hand dismissively, but she couldn't help the little smile that came to her face. "It's not a big deal," she said. "A little rain never killed anybody."

That worried look on Tenchi's face made her heart feel warm, though. There were certainly times that the assimilation with Zero left her flustered and exasperated-really, things had been so much easier when she had just been able to tamp her feelings down and bury them easily beneath a veneer of over the top insincere flirtatiousness, like any reasonable adult should! There were other times, though, that she truly relished those little moments that made her heart flutter like that. It was nice to know that her absence didn't go unnoticed, here. She still recalled with chagrin the way Kagato would scold her when she would return to his side after a week or two of gallivanting about the universe, the way he would look at her, first with surprise, then with disdain, as though he'd forgotten she even existed until she dared return to him later than he wanted. Tenchi had only known her for a short time when Kagato had returned and stolen her away, two years ago, and she hadn't dared to hope he would follow to try and save her. It was better that he didn't, she had told herself. Kagato would surely kill him, after all; her life wasn't worth his, there was no contest. When Tenchi and the others had come for her after all, it had stirred something within her she had never known she could feel. Surely there had been terror-grief, even, when she had believed Tenchi had been killed-but beneath all that, beneath the heavy mantle of fear for his life and anger at his recklessness, Ryoko had experienced something she had never known: recognition of _worth_. It hadn't just been Tenchi letting her crash in his house because he was a nice guy. It hadn't just been Tenchi not fussing over the fact that she'd built a flying onsen in his yard because he was easygoing. Tenchi had come to _rescue_ her, because she _mattered_ to him, in a way she'd never mattered to _anyone_ , and in the moment she hadn't known what to do with that.

There were times she still didn't.

She took the two big jugs of sake into the kitchen and placed them inside one of the floor cabinets, then took the tall, elegant bottle of Vindication out of the tattered, rain-wet bag and set it on the counter for a moment to grab her favorite sake cup. She looked over her shoulder when Sasami followed her into the kitchen and hopped up onto the stepstool in front of the stove to check on dinner.

"Smells good," Ryoko said, upturning the cup on top of the sake bottle and leaning against the counter.

"I hope it tastes as good as it smells," Sasami said with a smile, turning off the heat and moving to scoot the stool over so she could get bowls down from the cabinets. "I modified the recipe a little," she said, grunting a bit as she reached for the bowls, which were still a hair too high for her on the second shelf. Ryoko decided she was feeling philanthropic that evening, and floated over to grab them instead, before Sasami tried to clamber up onto the counter.

"I got it, shortstack," she said, counting as she rested the bowls on her arm. Tenchi, herself, Sasami, Aeka... wait. "Hey, where's gramps and Noike?" she asked, turning to look at Sasami as the younger girl kicked the stepstool over to the other counter and carefully shuffled some sliced vegetables into smaller bowls. "I didn't see them at the table."

"Noike took the truck into town," Sasami said. "She said it's been making that weird grindy noise again, and she wanted to take it down to the shop before the rain got too bad. She said she would just take a taxi home."

"Ah. And will gramps be joining us?"

Sasami shook her head. "He said he would come back later, but he was worried about the shrine, with the sudden rain," she said. "The roof still needs repairs in a few places, so he went to make sure any leaks were taken care of; the tatami in the shrine is really old, and he doesn't want to have to replace it 'cuz it got all wet."

Ryoko grinned. "More food for us, then," she said with a snicker, and Sasami sighed.

"I promised I would save some for them," she said in a mostly harmless warning tone. "You're not allowed to eat what I set aside for them, okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Ryoko said, setting the four wide, shallow bowls down and then grabbing one more, figuring Washuu's absence was due to some questionable science she suddenly decided had to be done in the lab right that second. "Just the four... five of us, then?" she asked, and Sasami made a wordless sound of affirmation.

"Mihoshi sent a letter earlier today saying she wouldn't be back until mid next week," she said, "and Washuu is still here, she's just in her lab."

"As usual," Ryoko said, shaking her head.

"I'll take her some food once we've eaten," Sasami said, smiling. "I think that if we didn't go check on her sometimes, she'd probably just starve in there."

Ryoko snorted. "Nah, she'd just invent some gross food in pill form or something so she could keep working," she said. "Starving to death would impede further science, and we all know where her priorities lie."

Sasami frowned a bit, holding the small bowls of vegetables on her arms and pausing by the door. "I think I'll just take her a bowl after we finish," she said, as if worried somehow Ryoko would find that unacceptable. "I think she'll like oyakodon much better than pill food."

Ryoko didn't bother to explain that she had been mostly joking, and just set the bowls down near the pan of food on the stove as Sasami delivered the veggies to the eating table. Then she turned and grabbed her bottle of sake to head back out to the table, sitting down to Tenchi's left and rolling her little cup between her hands.

"Miss Ryoko, I hope you haven't been spending Lord Tenchi's money on anything _unnecessary_ ," Aeka piped up with a frown as Ryoko pried the cork out of the top of the bottle and gave an experimental sniff.

"Nothing of the sort," she assured her, arching one eyebrow. "This didn't cost me a single yen."

"Ryoko, tell me you didn't _steal_ it..." Tenchi said nervously, and Ryoko bristled.

"I most certainly did _not_ ," she said, looking at him with hurt indignation. "Tenchi, you know me better than that; I would _never_ endanger a good business relationship that way!"

"Wasn't it you who was bragging about being a pirate just earlier today?" Aeka asked dryly.

Ryoko poured a bit of the sake into her cup, then lifted it to her face and held it beneath her nose for a moment. "You clearly know nothing about piracy," she said, rolling her eyes. "A good pirate appreciates a good business partner. Steal from a reliable supplier once, and you run the risk of losing their business permanently!" She clicked her tongue. "Really, you'd make an awful pirate. Stick to princessing; you're really unmatched at thinking you're better than everybody else."

Tenchi shook his head. "So it was just free?" he asked, and Ryoko beamed.

"The vendor thinks I'm such a valuable customer, he gave me this on the house!" she said brightly. "He said he wants my honest opinion on the taste."

"I guess sake is the one thing you're capable of being honest about," Aeka remarked, and Ryoko ignored her, taking a small sip of the sake.

She was a bit surprised at how _cold_ it felt going down. The bottle hadn't been refrigerated, and it had been pretty temperate outside until the rain had started, but the sake itself felt like it had been chilled for hours. Seijuu had certainly gotten the 'snow' part of the name right. It was very smooth, with an almost sweet sort of aftertaste, and Ryoko made a soft noise of consideration.

"Well, is it any good?" Tenchi asked, looking genuinely curious. He reached for the bottle to look at the writing, and Ryoko grinned at him.

"Wanna try some?" she asked, holding her cup out, though she knew he would turn her down. He always did, reminding her gently that he was still underage (though Katsuhito and Nobuyuki never seemed too worried about that detail). Tenchi was a remarkably upstanding young man, and his unfailing ability to resist temptation was terribly endearing, as far as Ryoko was concerned. She leaned against his shoulder and held the cup out. "Come on, Tenchi, live a little," she said softly, and Tenchi leaned back a bit, crinkling his nose at the smell of the sake.

"Ryoko, come on, we've been through this," he said, giving her a weary sort of smile, and she clicked her tongue and moved back into her own space.

"Can't blame a girl for tryin'," she said, and took another sip of the sake. "It's pretty good," she said, swirling the liquid around the inside of the cup. "Not sure I'd pay a premium for it, but it's not bad."

"How can you even tell?" Aeka asked, surprisingly sounding more curious than derogatory. "You ate that curry two weeks ago that was essentially just vegetables in a jar of curry paste, and you were completely unfazed."

Ryoko looked offended anyway. "Well pardon me for being made of sterner stuff than you," she grumbled. Maybe she didn't have the most refined palate when it came to edible delicacies, but Ryoko knew her sake.

"Thank you for waiting!" Sasami called, exiting the kitchen with a tray, four bowls of oyakodon steaming thereupon. Setting the tray down in the middle of the table, she gestured for everyone to take a bowl as she dashed back to the kitchen to grab the teapot and cups for everyone.

"Sometimes I feel like we should help Sasami out more," Tenchi said quietly, setting his bowl in front of him and giving Aeka a slightly contrite look, "but every time I try, she just tells me she's got it and to go sit down."

"She's very independent," Aeka said, gently resting her chopsticks in front of her bowl, "and she likes to feel useful. She hasn't been able to aid us much, when situations have gotten dangerous, and I know she feels guilty for that."

Ryoko reached across the table to nab a wad of thinly sliced vegetables from one of the smaller bowls in the center of the table with the wide ends of her chopsticks. "That ain't her fault, though," she said, setting the vegetables on top of her oyakodon and reaching toward a different bowl. "We can't ask a little kid to fight monsters and stuff." Even if Sasami was _technically_ sort of a goddess. She dropped the other slices of vegetable into her bowl and then picked one of them up with the narrow end of her chopsticks. "She shouldn't feel guilty," she said, bringing the chopsticks to her mouth.

Tenchi jumped. "Ah-Ryoko, wait, that's-"

"Hm?" She popped the food into her mouth and Tenchi just stared for a moment before reaching out and picking up the bowl she'd served herself from.

"These are... chili peppers," he said, and Ryoko looked at the thin red slices for a moment before chewing thoughtfully and quirking an eyebrow at Tenchi. "They're supposed to be mixed into the food to make it a little spicy, you don't just eat them plain."

"Why not?" Ryoko asked, shaking her head.

"Because they're really hot?" Tenchi ventured, looking caught somewhere between bafflement and alarm.

"They're good, actually," Ryoko said, looking puzzled. "Got a bit of a kick to 'em." Tenchi's jaw slid open, and Aeka harrumphed, picking up her own chopsticks.

"Well they can't be _that_ hot," she insisted, reaching across the table to nab a few of the bright red pepper slices herself.

"Ah-! Miss Aeka, I wouldn't-!"

"Princess, that's probably a _bad_ idea-"

Aeka grabbed a wad of the thinly sliced peppers and defiantly shoved them into her mouth, but before she really had a chance to start chewing, her eyes had snapped open wide and filled with tears. Ryoko watched in bemusement as she looked extremely torn for half an instant, like she was debating being downright unladylike for just a moment and spitting the peppers out, but in the end decided the lack of refinement wouldn't be worth it, and she swallowed instead. With a sharp cry, Aeka reached out as if to grab for a beverage, and upon realizing the tea had not been brought to the table yet, let out another cry that was twice as shrill, tears now streaming down her cheeks.

Ryoko calmly refilled her sake cup and held it out toward her, and without even thinking about it, Aeka snatched the cup from Ryoko's hand and threw the entire contents back, gasping as the cold burn of the sake clashed against the searing heat of the peppers. She dropped the cup onto the table and her head quickly followed suit, hitting the wood with a loud _thunk_.

Sasami emerged from the kitchen again, a tray of tea in her hands and Ryo Ohki perched on her shoulder, and as she made her way to the table she cast an odd look toward her sister, then looked at Tenchi questioningly.

"She decided to try the peppers," Ryoko said, deliberately grabbing another few slices and eating them herself. "She was warned."

"Aeka, are you okay?" Sasami asked, looking quite concerned. "Those are takanotsume peppers, they're really hot, you're only supposed to add a few to the whole bowl!"

Aeka lifted her head woozily, her eyes red and her cheeks wet, and she gave Sasami a broad smile.

"I'm fine," she assured her, "I'm perfectly fine." She sat up straighter and took a moment to adjust her hair before swiping her hands beneath her eyes. "They weren't _that_ hot."

"Want another?" Ryoko asked, holding her chopsticks out, laden with another wad of thinly sliced peppers, and Aeka just leaned away.

"No, _thank_ you."

"More for me," Ryoko said with a shrug, popping the peppers into her mouth.

"Ryoko, you can really just eat them like that? And it doesn't hurt?" Sasami asked, looking amazed, and Ryoko reached over to retrieve her sake cup from Aeka, refilling it.

"Yeah, I'm fine," she said, shaking her head. "You know it's a chemical, that makes peppers spicy, right?" she asked, and Sasami nodded.

"Yeah, cap... capsee..."

"Capsaicin," Ryoko said, wagging her chopsticks in the air. "It's not really dangerous, but it's still a low-key toxic substance. Eat a whole plate'a hot peppers and you're really gonna regret it in an hour. Get the oil in your eye and you're gonna have a rough time of things, you know?"

"Ohh, I see," Tenchi said, waiting for Sasami to sit down and retrieve her bowl of food from the tray before he picked up his chopsticks and rested them on the side of his bowl. "So because it's a toxic substance, even if it's not really all that harmful, you can just negate the effects, right?"

"Bingo," she said, setting her chopsticks down, and then she glanced at Aeka. "If you'd _waited_ a damn minute I could have _told_ you that was why it didn't bother me."

Really, Aeka's insistence that anything Ryoko could do, she could do better, it sometimes reached the point of absurdity. Aeka had her strengths, even Ryoko could acknowledge that-when things got tough, the princess was no pushover-but she was still mostly, well, _human_. Ish. Juraian. Whatever, close enough. Her body still functioned like that of a normal mortal being, and that meant Ryoko was always going to have the advantage in just about any forseeable circumstance. The competition between them was mostly in good fun, anymore, but Aeka seemed to genuinely forget sometimes that Ryoko was not only not really _human_ , but was essentially a demigoddess, for most intents and purposes.

"All right, now that that's been settled," Tenchi said, shaking his head hopelessly, and clapped his hands together, "can we please just eat dinner?"

"Let's eat!" the rest of them said in unison (though Aeka's voice sounded a bit hoarse and wobbly).

Loading another wad of sliced peppers into her oyakodon, Ryoko shoveled a bite of food into her mouth and grinned at Sasami.

"Definitely as good as it smells," she said, and Sasami just laughed, chiding her for talking with her mouth full.

She cast her eyes toward the tall windows and sliding door overlooking the deck by the pond then, squinting a little. It was still raining, and hard; she could hear it, and though it was too dark to really see outside from this distance, she could see the lines of water sliding down the windows, catching the light from inside and dragging the illumination down the glass in rivulets. It was unusual for it to rain at this time of year, especially this hard. The rainy season had ended a couple of weeks ago; September was usually a pretty dry month, by comparison. She wondered absently how long this would keep up, hoping it would taper off before it got too late. Ryoko always had a hard time sleeping when it was raining out.

It was still early, though; the sun had only set less than an hour ago. Ryoko turned her attention back to her meal, figuring she had plenty of time to worry about the rain later.

ミ

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many much thanks to my buddy Ron for nattering about these nerds with me! and thank you so much for your reviews so far, i love you guys! also please check me out on Archive Of Our Own at kawree, to see this fic with illustrations!


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